It is known that the electronic gas lighting devices currently present on the market, e.g. of the type described in EP-A-1469255 to the same Applicant, comprise a casing formed by electrically insulating material, in which high-voltage pulse generator means are arranged comprising electronic control means and a transformer provided with a primary winding and a secondary winding, the latter consisting of a plurality of coils, carried by at least one element formed by electrically insulating material consisting of a drum in which the primary winding is accommodated, along with a ferrite bar forming the ferromagnetic core, and externally to which the coils forming the secondary winding are wound.
Even though the known devices are entirely satisfactory from the technical point of view, they however display a relatively low electric efficiency which forces to use a relatively large amount of electric material for the construction thereof, in particular in the windings in order to achieve the required performance levels.
The known gas lighting devices available today thus present relatively high cost and large size. In particular, the device known from EP-A-1469255 already displays many improvements from this point of view, in addition to brilliantly solving the specific problem of cost-effectively and simply equipping cooking ranges provided with either an even or an odd number of burners, but does not fully solve the technical problems of reaching a better electric efficiency of the transformer.
In general terms, such a specific problem could be at least attenuated, if not solved, by using transformers in which the ferrite core, instead of being formed by a straight bar, with consequent possible dispersion of magnetic flux from the ends, is C-shaped with facing ends, such as for example in the transformer present in the supply device for electric lamps known from EP-A-1189314. However, the simple carryover of such different transformer design to the field of electronic gas lighting devices is not possible because, on one hand, it is not at all suited to the current layout of gas lighting devices and would make the assembly thereof extremely complex and costly and, on the other hand, would be likely to increase the size, thus obtaining a result opposite to the desired one which consists in reducing the production and assembly costs and the size of the finished gas lighting device.